Fridge Brilliance
- The astronauts just accept it when the Doctor tells them he's an alien time traveller, which seems odd, until you realize the astronauts may well have been briefed on the potential of meeting the Doctor on this trip. Enough world governments know about him that they have plans in place to locate him and/or the TARDIS in times of crisis, and this certainly fits the bill for a Doctor visit. Possibly a bit of Stable Time Loop going on, since Courtney apparently becomes the President on the United States at some point; if it's either before or during this story, she knows damn well what's going to happen and could discreetly make sure the right people were ready for it. Which leads to some mild Fridge Horror in that President Courtney knowingly sent two men to their deaths.
- The creature hatched, then left an almost identical egg behind. This leaves open the possibility that this has happened before, maybe even multiple times! We don't know if the eggs take hundreds of millions of years to hatch, or only a few million, or even less. The Doctor mentioned, several times, that humanity has had a giant egg orbiting above for several hundred million years without realizing it. However, as some fans have pointed out, the moon is actually several billion years old. So maybe the Doctor simply meant that this egg in particular was several hundred million years old.
- The Doctor's decision to let the humans deal with a difficult situation by themselves seems harsh, and Clara's response was indeed well justified from her point of view. However, when you remember the last time he was involved in a pivotal event on which humanity's future among the stars depended, his actions do begin to seem quite different. The Doctor really is indeed better off avoiding getting involved in events like that, which shows that he got the lesson from the last time.
- The Charles Dickens quote in Clara's classroom near the end of the episode from "David Copperfield", "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by somebody else, these pages must show". It is a reference stating that as the story unfolds, it will have to be decided whether the main character takes charge of his own life, or if he will always be reliant upon others, or will allow others to make the big decisions on his behalf. It is a handy analogue to Clara, whether she is willing to step up and take matters into her own hands, or if she will defer to others (the Doctor or the vote of humanity below) to make those choices for her.
- This episode adds a bit of retroactive Fridge Brilliance to the 1967 episode "The Moonbase", in which Two saved a lunar gravity-control station from the Cybermen. Originally, that episode described the base's Gravitron device as a means of manipulating Earth's weather, the better to guarantee good harvests and feed an overpopulated planet. But if the original Moon's hatching in 2049 caused devastating tsunami on Earth, then it's much more plausible that the Gravitron was installed on the new egg to avert similar catastrophes, and using it to play around with weather patterns was just a fringe benefit for 2070.
- Why would the Moon!Creature be born pregnant? Because Moon!Eggs are not a method for Moon!Creatures to make more Moon!Creatures, Moon!Creatures are a method for Moon!Eggs to make more Moon!Eggs. Far weirder creatures have turned up in this franchise, after all.
Fridge Horror
- There's no way that the population of Earth — especially the people who turned their lights off — are going to let the second egg gestate. The moment the Doctor and Clara have gone, they'll be building new spaceships to get up there and kill the embryo. After all, the first egg caused mass death just by growing. And if they find the amniotic fluid's good for anything, extract it and sell it at a profit.
- Even if humans leave it alone, the second egg will probably be broiled alive by the same destructive solar flare cycle that causes the Earth to be evacuated in the era of Starship U.K.
- The astronauts were on a suicide mission. Even if the shuttle hadn't crash-landed, it wasn't going to escape Earth-level gravity without its booster. Escaping lunar gravity might have been possible, but that wasn't going to happen until the nukes reset gravity (somehow). And the nukes were placed within walking distance.
Fridge Logic
On the headscratchers page.
